Lord Anderson of Ipswich: My Lords, I echo the importance of the issue that the noble Lord, Lord Dodds, has raised in his Amendment 44ZA. That issue, in a nutshell, is that relevant provisions of EU law apply in Northern Ireland and may, under the Northern Ireland protocol and Windsor Framework, result in the judicial disapplication of incompatible legislation.
The Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission, which of course is the statutory body appointed to look at these things, reported that Clauses 1 and 2 of this Bill are contrary to Article 2 of the Northern Ireland protocol. I asked the Minister in Committee whether the Government agreed with that, and he wrote to me on Monday as he had promised. The letter expressed the Government’s disagreement with the NIHRC, though without engaging with the detailed provisions that it had identified relating to asylum seekers as problematic for the application of the Bill in Northern Ireland. I respectfully question whether that conclusion is correct, given statements already made by the High Court of Northern Ireland in the various cases referred to by the noble Lord and the noble Baroness, Lady Lister.
I understand that the final judgment in the Northern Irish challenge to the Illegal Migration Act 2023, to which the noble Lord, Lord Dodds, referred—I think that he referred to the commission decision—is expected in the next 10 days or so, perhaps even in time for what we must assume will be ping-pong. I do not support the noble Lord, Lord Dodds, in his amendment, which asks us to disapply the EU withdrawal Act, but let me make a different suggestion. As the Government apply themselves to the judgments of the Northern Ireland courts, which have been referred to, I hope that they will reflect that, by accepting some of the amendments that your Lordships have already made to this Bill, they can protect it from successful judicial challenge in Northern Ireland and so ensure that it applies across the whole United Kingdom as intended.
On Amendments 44A and 44B, relating to the position of the Channel Islands, I declare an interest as a soon- to-be-retired member of the Courts of Appeal of Jersey and Guernsey. I have written to the Minister on this issue already and await with interest his response to the compelling points made by the noble Lord, Lord Dubs. I add only that the irregularity that he has identified surely applies, as he indicated, not just to Jersey or the Channel Islands generally but to all the Crown dependencies—including, I assume, the Isle of Man.